Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Thus are my hopes of making Born Free 4!!!! After installing the fresh engine in Caroilne I discovered that one of my old lifter blocks was worn out and two of my hydraulic units were not pumping up. Switched out lifters and bases and went back to the solid conversion. Put on a few miles. The further I went, the noisier she got! Pin pointed racket to the primary, specifically the compensating sprocket. Took primary apart, AGAIN, and discovered that my new rotor was too thin causing the nut to bottom out on sprocket shaft before tightening over splines. I also managed to cut the o-ring seal into two unequal pieces. Straightened that out only to break one of the flanges off of my starter housing on reassembly and busted the cap off of the starter solenoid white twisting off one of the copper posts. I've made myself a slave in my garage to get my bike going, blew my vacation budget on parts, neglected my family, and ignored the pile of customer bikes I need to be working on. Suffice to say, I don't feel very "Born Free"!! I'm closer than I've ever been to selling an FL Shovel off in parts!! Caroline is a bitch, and I FREAKIN' HATE TROUBLEHEADS!!!

I spent some time at Williams Precision Engines recently working on a static balancing job on Carolines' fly wheels. I weighed my pistons and found that they were 2 grams different in weight, so I worked some material off of the internal bosses to balance them. I also worked some material off of the wrist pin end of one of my connecting rode to balance the weight of the rods. They started out at 11 grams difference, I was able to bring them within two. Then after weighing out all of my up and down and roundy round parts, I balanced the fly wheels by drilling weight out of the heavy spot. I've probably gone further balancing this engine than I have any other, we'll know soon enough if my efforts were in vain. Over kill you say? I say "like spit in the ocean, every little bit helps.